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International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620 Surpassing the Ekphrastic Experience in Modernist Bhagyalekshmi R

MA in English Literature, EFL University, Hyderabad, India

Abstract—The modernist poetry developed a fear of and P.B. Shelley’s “On the Medusa of Leonardo Da words being taken in their true literal sense, which W.T.J. Vinci in the Florentine Gallery” are some of the finest Mitchell called the “Ekphrastic Fear”. This paper Ekphrastic poems that have come out. Brueghel’s explores how the fear of literalism results in self- famous painting of Icarus became the subject of not less reflexivity, semiotic transparency and the pursuit of than eighteen poems, two of which were W.H. Auden’s openness in Modernist poems. Ekphrasis verbally “Musee des Beaux Arts” and William Carlos William’s describes a work of art or an event that is either real or is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”. Brueghel’s imagined. The root meaning of Ekphrasis comes from the “Hunters” also was verbally represented by Williams, Greek words “ek” that means ‘out’ and “phrásis” that John Berryman, Norbert Krapf, and John Langland. The means ‘speak’, and “Ekphrazien” means ‘speaking out’ arts have influenced each other all through the ages in or ‘telling in full’. In the process, the gives voice to a their simultaneous growth and development. The silent object, and by detailing its fixed form, becomes revolutions in Modernist poetry were strongly stimulated immortal and static, thus suspending time. Ekphrasis is by the changes in the visual artistic scene. Inspired by considered thrice removed from reality, being a the “Manet and the Post-Impressionists” of 1910,the representation of the original’s representation. Thus, a modern French painters who chose to move away from poet records his visual experience, whether it is what he naturalism, the or International Exhibition has seen, reconstructed or imagined, as he perceives of was held at the 69th Regiment Armory in them, within the visual space that he constructs. In such New York in the year 1913. While the Armory Show poems, the image is the subject and the meaning is was an exhibition with fresh, new and original works of determined by the verbal representation of the subject. art that caused a surge of heated controversy, the painters The tradition of Ekphrastic poetry as a literary work in New York, on the other hand, found in it the began with Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles opportunity to create an atmosphere of artistic daring. in his book Illiad, and there are many poems that The show made people realize that the perception of proliferated ever since. things and their relation with one another, distinguished .Keywords— Ekphrasis, Experiments, Innovations, the Modern age from the past. Thus there evolved a new Openness, Reinforced-Individualism, Self-reflexivity. way of viewing external objects and a new way of imagination while representing them. , I. INTRODUCTION and other revolutionary art forms, along with post- The uniqueness of ekphrasis in Modernist period stems , were featured in the exhibition that from the Modernist rebellion against the traditional turned out to be one of shock and amusement for the norms and methods that existed in art, literature, Americans in New York, Chicago and Boston. The architecture, philosophy and music. With the rejection impact was not restricted to painters alone, as it spread to came the wave of experimentation and individualism, other fields of art as well. This revolution in painting both of which were anathema in the past. This made the aware of the lack of good innovative dissatisfaction largely emerged out of the horrors that the work in the poetry of that time. The mutual lack of world saw in the aftermath of the World War, rapid respect for the basic laws of pictorial art and their urbanization, industrialization, and the coming of the common sense of individuality was the common thread mass culture. The result was the inwardness, self- that ran through the style of the Armory Show painters. consciousness, alienation, and fragmentation in the This made the poets dissatisfied with their literary laws modern society which strongly reflected in art, especially and traditions and engaged in iconoclasm. The new, in poetry. Andrew Marvell’s “the Picture of Little T.C. shocking and the strange ways of and their in a Prospect of Flowers”, John Keats’s “Ode on a need to “make it new”, emerged out of the abandoning Grecian Urn”, Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” of the artistic values that were considered sacred from www.ijels.com Page | 263 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620 the Renaissance onwards. The slogan “Make it new” is make people think about their existence through their widely attributed to . He Pound disagreed works. , and with the notion of rejecting everything that belonged to were among them who acted towards this the past, which the Futurists and Dadaists believed in. idea in reinforcing the need for individualism. Thus On the other hand, he incorporated the ancient traditions Modernism became a period of self-consciousness and and forms into his works. inward looking attitude, with each and every object being given their share of uniqueness and importance. II. TRADITION AND TRANSGRESSION Ekphrasis was widely employed by the Modernist poets , one of the artists who were featured in as a gateway for their desire to paint in words what they the show, with his different attitude towards art paved perceive and imagine. W.J.T. Mitchell in his article, way for the poets to reject the traditional notions of art “Ekphrasis and the Other” divides Ekphrasis into three and culture. Along with Picasso and Matisse, he phases of realization – Ekphrastic difference, Ekphrastic revolutionized the developments in the art in the hope and Ekphrastic fear. beginning of the twentieth century. He rejected the The first might be called "ekphrastic “retinal” art works, which he believed were just pleasing indifference," and it grows out of a to the eyes and didn’t contribute in any way towards the commonsense perception that ekphrasis is evolution of art or human. It was during this time that impossible. This impossibility is articulated in or Dadaism, an that is called anti-art all sorts of familiar assumptions about the movement, emerged. With this idea, Duchamp turned inherent, essential properties of the various ordinary things like a bicycle wheel, urinal, bottle rack, media and their proper or appropriate modes of shovel, into works of art, which came across as an attack perception. . . This literature reflects a second on the conventional notions of the subject matter of art phase of fascination with the topic I will call and the representation of the artist’s personal vision of "ekphrastic hope." This is the phase when the reality. By making art out of these ordinary objects, he impossibility of ekphrasis is overcome in created a sense of amusement in the spectators that they imagination or metaphor, when we discover a weren’t used to. Thus he established that any object could "sense" in which language can do what so many be considered as art. writers have wanted it to do: "to make us see.". . . But the "still moment" of ekphrastic hope quickly encounters a third phase, which we might call "ekphrastic fear." This is the moment of resistance or counter desire that occurs when we sense that the difference between the verbal and visual representation might collapse and the figurative, imaginary desire of ekphrasis might be realized literally and actually. (W.T.J. Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other”) In the process of verbalizing a visual image, multiple layers of meanings and perceptions are added to the writing and thus, the language tends to be taken more critically than its less complex visual equivalent. Even though Ekphrastic poems are about things, they are Fig.1: The - a urinal that is kept inverted was written as an attempt by the poets to enable the readers to signed and exhibited as a piece of art by Duchamp. see beyond the words. Consequently, the various dimensions of the poems point to the text itself, declaring Duchamp influenced the art of the twentieth century in on its own for what it is. The fear of the literalism arising the ways of perceiving an object of use into an object of from the likelihood of the verbal given more prominence beauty. He chose items, and by making small changes in than the actual visual image prompted the Modernist their positioning, those items were declared works of art. poets to write self-reflexive poems. They make the Innovations in visual art found its way into the readers aware that the work of art that they are trying to Modernist poetry with new experiments in form and visualize is, in fact, nothing more than a poem. style, new modes of expression and complex nature of The self-reflexivity of the Modernist texts pose their themes and meanings. With individualism getting as opaque surface, urging the readers to understand it, in lost in the crowd, it became necessary for the artists to its terms of poetic forms and techniques. For instance, www.ijels.com Page | 264 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620 William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow” is meant then on in relation to his Brueghel series. to be taken as a poem that is complete on its own with a (Carbajosa 55) single sentence: Modernist poems, with explicit descriptions, can so much depends make themselves look opaque-surfaced. Most of the upon a red wheel poems written by Gertrude Stein are based on ‘objects’, barrow ‘rooms’ and ‘food’. While the poems that are supposed to glazed with rain be mere descriptions of objects create an illusion to be water taken for its surface image, the language proves beside the white otherwise. There were a lot of themes that were dealt with chickens (Williams 224) by the poets. The horrors of the war, along with rapid The poem forces the reader to take notice of the line urbanization created complete disorder and chaos in the breakages and fragmentation. The first line “so much world. Mass production resulted in the fall of handmade depends” makes it evident that the poem is aware of and handicraft industries, which quickly led to the loss of itself. An ordinary sentence is made into a poem with individuality. Chaos of the modern age also made it careful breaking down into short lines, and as a result, necessary to find beauty in the chaotic mundane things. stressing importance on each element. While describing Regard for broken pieces came to be a common trait what seems to be the scene of a moment, the poet wants among Modernist paintings and Modernist literature. us not to forget the fact that it is a poem that we are With more machinery, laborers started to be seen as mere reading. Moreover, by describing the positioning of each commodities and not as human beings. People were made and every object, the poem points out at the image that it to work in poor working conditions and were exploited to conveys. the maximum. As machines were given more importance Self-reflexivity can be clearly seen in Williams’ “The than humans, artists, especially poets expressed their Great Figure”: disappointment at the gravity of the situation. This meant Among the rain that poems could no longer be seen as a source of and lights pleasure, but their symbolic representation should also be I saw the figure 5 accounted for. Consequently, attempts started to be made in gold to read through the seemingly opaque surface to on a red understand what it means, hinting at its semiotic fire truck transparency. moving Williams wrote about things as they are in most tense of his poems, the things ranging from a sign he sees on a unheeded truck to that of a painting made by Pieter Brueghel. The to gong clangs collection “Pictures from Brueghel” contains poems siren howls written on various paintings by the painter. In the poem and wheels rumbling “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” with the tragic death through the dark city. (Williams 230) of Icarus, as painted by Brueghel, Williams engages in a Here, it is not merely the description of a sign that is seen detailed description of each and every element of the on a fast-moving truck, but it is described as seen by the painting. He begins the poem by taking the name of the speaker. “I saw the figure 5” on the third line puts the painter: poem into its place. According to Brueghel In relation to Williams’s approach to the literary when Icarus fell commentary of Brueghel’s pictures, Steiner it was spring (Williams 4) affirms that “Williams’s understanding of the ut This acknowledgment can be seen in his other pictura poesis simile went beyond the poems also. By mentioning the name of the artist in every metaphoric… to the creation of structural poem that are written about paintings, he asserts the equivalents of paintings in his poems” (1982: authority of the artist and the fact that the piece is a poem 73). What we find in “Portrait of a Lady” does about a painting. More than being a poem about a not actually constitute a “structural equivalent” painting, it talks about the poet’s view points and of a picture, but it offers ample scope for perceptions. discussion of the limitations of language used for Ekphrastic purposes. Furthermore, it leads Williams towards a path which he followed from

www.ijels.com Page | 265 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620

Fig .3: The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Brueghel

Here again, it was the poet who chose to detail the Fig.2: “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Pieter foreground at the end and chose to focus on the Brueghel. Note that the legs of the drowning Icarus are background of the picture till then. As the poet makes a barely visible, while the landscape with the farmer declaration about what follows is important and should be catches our attention quickly. The same technique is taken seriously, the ordinary mundane objects become followed by Williams in his poem too. things of high relevance. Moreover in Williams’ works, there is scope for the readers to make interpretations and It was Brueghel’s choice to give primary this space is left by the poet intentionally. For instance, importance to the farmer and other people and things on the objects mentioned in “The Red Wheelbarrow” are the landscape, rather than focusing on Icarus, who is familiar – “wheel,” “water,” “chicken”. They are made drowning barely noticed in the lake. Thus he presents specific with “red,” “rain,” “glazed” – which makes these what he thinks the artist wants to convey through the ordinary objects, when linked together, make a whole painting. Every part of the landscape is described in detail new meaning. and thus it becomes self-revealing. The eyes of the viewer Gertrude Stein, in her poems that are seemingly automatically go to the prominent features, than at the difficult to comprehend, wrote on a variety of themes subject of the painting. The same technique is followed under the banner of ‘objects’, ‘room’ and ‘food’. The fact by Williams who takes the readers by lead from one that she chose to wrote about a box, coffee, an umbrella, a element to another. The details are presenting in the order red stamp, a plate and so on proves how she gels in with of their visual importance or how the viewer registers the Modernist philosophy. There is nothing extra-ordinary them. The drowning of Icarus is not mentioned till the last about these everyday objects. They are all used by line, the way it wouldn’t catch the notice of the viewer of ordinary people in their daily life, which tend to be taken the painting, till the end. Icarus, the hero of the myth is for granted. Her choice of works was based on their given secondary importance, while the ordinary people intended quality and not for their accepted meaning. In and animals are given much prominence. her collection of poems Tender Buttons, she wrote about The lack of punctuations also gives the very ordinary objects like a carafe, cushion, a box and so description a sense of happening in a flow. Moreover, the on. In “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”, he describes short lines enable in giving prominence to each and every carafe in terms that detach it from the concept that we mentioned detail of the scene. The same method is know about. followed by him in “Hunters in the Snow”, which is also A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and from “Pictures from Brueghel”. A scene with the harsh nothing strange a single hurt color and an weather is made static in the painting, which was taken by arrangement in a system to pointing. (Stein 3) the poets to describe in his style. The last lines of the Here, a familiar object is de-familiarized with its poem show Williams’ awareness of the artistic world: imaginative and creative description. The “nothing strange” (3) is ironic because making the object strange Brueghel is the painter seems to be the aim of the poet. Stein was aware of the concerned with it all has chosen alienation and disorder that existed around her and didn’t a winter- struck bush for his foreground to want to be a part of the convention complete the picture. (Williams5) All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. (3) Thus, by talking about objects that aren’t usually discussed in poems, she very well belonged to an era of www.ijels.com Page | 266 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620 artistic revolution. Stein’s poems are considered difficult of moderate height, to understand and interpret. This is because of the various (I have seen it) possible interpretations that could be derived from these cloudy but bright inside lines. like a moonstone, The blue coat that she talks about in her “A Blue while a yellow glow Coat” can contain any number of inherent symbols: from a shutter-crack shone, A blue coat is guided guided away, guided and and a blue glow from the lamppost guided away, that is the particular color that is close to the front door. used for that length and not any width not even It left nothing of which to complain, more than a shadow. (9) nothing more to obtain, The “blue coat” can stand for anything from life consummately plain. (Moore 360) to shadows that are “guided guided away, guided and guided away”. With the deceptive covering of opacity, There is the juxtapositions of darkness and light, the poem is an example of Modernist poem both being when she used “cloudy” and “bright”, “yellow glow’ and self-reflexive and semiotically transparent. “blue glow’, that give a haunted outlook to the house that The Modernists did not believe in presenting a is set in a bright environment. When she says that there is fixed meaning for their poetic creation. Instead, they left “nothing of which to complain”, she admits how plain the enough space for the readers to draw their own house looks for an onlooker, yet there is nothing more to interpretations and conclusions. Ekphrastic fear has ask for. The house here could also signify human helped in reducing the power the poets have on the relationships that put a constraint to our expectations by readers. He or she draws her own image from what can be not having anything to demand or accept. Even the black understood of the poem. tree at the back is clearly pictured and given certain In “The red wheelbarrow”, though Williams has “definiteness” that again puts a limit to our imagination mentioned the particularity of the positioning of every and expectations. There is a certain kind of discreetness object, the reader has the scope to imagine the scene. The surrounding the painting, which can be seen in Moore’s objects and components are perfect in themselves. poem too. By describing the exact colour and position of Though they exist independently, they are linked together objects, she limits the imagination of the reader. by the thread of imagination. The sense of openness in the Alongside Williams and Moore, Wallace approach can be seen in Stein’s poems also. The objects Stevens also acknowledged the importance of modern art that she describes are not precise like her carafe, stamp, as a fundamental influence in his poetry. The typical piano, hair, etc. Since the poets had aimed at individuality example of ekphrastic poetry by Stevens is “Anecdote of and creating an alienation effect, the central images of a Jar”. Unlike the ornamental decorative “urn”, Stevens’ their poems had a uniqueness of their own. This meant “jar is more earthly and realistic. It is given the status of that the scope for imagination was limited, in spite of the just another commodity, while also maintaining poets’ desire for openness. simplicity in the language of the poem. The act of placing wrote “The Magician’s the round jar (a man-made object) on the wilderness Retreat” after she saw Rene Magritte’s “Empire of Light” (nature) naturally points out to the claiming of the in the New York Times Magazine. The poet describes the environment and everything that’s in it by man. The house in great detail, claiming that she has “seen it”. process of “rising up of the wilderness” and “sprawling around the wild” shows how the interference of man collides with the natural functioning of nature. The repeated use of the word “round” gives a sound of roundness to the poem. The placing of the jar on the hill is also symbolic of God’s creation of man in the already designed world. Like how it is the jar that makes changes to the wilderness, man exploits the nature according to his own whims and wishes.

III. CONCLUSION The Ekphrastic fear encompasses the possibility of the worth of the actual thing being undermined while considering its literature, which is thrice removed from

Fig.4: Rene Magritte’s “Empire of Light” reality. In the process, multiple layers of meanings and www.ijels.com Page | 267 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.11 ISSN: 2456-7620 perceptions are added to writing that is meant to be an [8] Heffernan, J. A. (2004). Museum of words: The equivalent representation of the visual image. The poetics of ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. different dimensions point to the text itself, declaring on University of Chicago Press. its own for what it is. The self-reflexivity of the [9] Middleton, T. (Ed.). (2003). Modernism: Critical Modernist texts pose as opaque surface, urging the Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Vol. 5). readers to understand it, in its terms of poetic forms and SUNY Press. techniques. As already seen, William Carlos Williams’s [10] Mitchell, W. J. J. T. (1994). Ekphrasis and the “Red wheel barrow” is meant to be taken as a poem that other: Picture theory. is complete on its own with a single sentence. It forces the [11] Stein, G. (2017). Tender buttons: objects, food, reader to take notice of the line breakages and rooms. Broadview Press. fragmentation. The horrors of the war, along with the [12] Steiner, W. (1988). Pictures of romance: form rapid urbanization had its impact on the people losing against context in painting and literature. their individuality, alienation and complete disorder and University of Chicago Press. chaos in the world. This reflected in the Modernist [13] Stevens, W. (2011). The collected poems of Wallace literature to a great extent, especially in poetry. While the Stevens. Vintage. poems create an illusion to be taken for its surface image, the language proves otherwise. The methods of writing underwent changes with their disregard for the traditional forms. For example, Gertrude Stein’s poems are often considered difficult to comprehend with its deceptive simplicity. A poem about the “Red Stamp” doesn’t seem to be about it with its descriptions. Consequently, attempts are made to read through the seemingly opaque surface to understand what it means, hinting at its semiotic transparency. The Modernist poems delude the readers to believe that they are open to interpretations. The apparition of the possibility of having different facets to the poem is interrupted by the fact that the scope is limited. The carafe of Gertrude Stein appears in different images, but ultimately, it cannot be anything but what the poet has created.

REFERENCES [1] Abrams, M. H, & Harpham, G. (2011). A glossary of literary terms. Cengage Learning. [2] Bloom, H. (1980). Wallace Stevens: The poems of our climate. Cornell University Press. [3] Carbajosa, N. (2012). Ekphrasis and Modernism: A Study of Two Poems by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. [4] Camfield, W. A. (1990). Marcel Duchamp’s fountain: Its history and aesthetics in the context of 1917. Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the century. [5] Dijkstra, B. (1978). Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams: The Hieroglyphics of a New Speech (No. 37). Princeton University Press. [6] Gelpi, A. (2006). Poetic Language and Language Poetry: Levertov, Duncan, Creeley. Gelpi and Bertholf, 180-98. [7] Halter, P. (1994). The revolution in the visual arts and the poetry of William Carlos Williams (Vol. 76). Cambridge University Press. www.ijels.com Page | 268